This is why we have a justice system in which lower-court conflicts
rise up for resolution by a single, supreme court. This is why the law
can seem, at times, to be a "same planet, different world" proposition
to those who don't follow it closely (and even to those of us who do).

We have, in the span of just 10 days, seen two diametrically opposed
judicial rulings about the legitimacy of the government's controversial
bulk metadata collection program, the existence of which we learned
about just this past year thanks to Edward Snowden. Although the two
opinions apply the same law and essentially the same facts, they are so
contradictory they cannot be reconciled. One judge will be proven right
and the other proven wrong, although I suspect it may be 2015 before
the final tally is recorded.

Last week, a federal trial judge in Washington boldly declared the NSA's bulk metadata collection program to be "likely
unconstitutional," as applied to individual citizens whose phone records
were collected and stored. Here is the link to that ruling,